


Blurred Lines

by orphan_account



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 15:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8407738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "The flirtatious CEO of a new electrical company asks Pepper Potts how she puts up with Tony Stark."





	

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. 
> 
> Pepperony is an old and beloved ship of mine. set pre-iron man through post iron man 2. 
> 
> read and review please :)

 

            The flirtatious CEO of a new electrical company asks Pepper Potts how she puts up with Tony Stark. She shakes her head and draws a blank, only able to envision a memory of Tony staggering and drunk, puppy-eyed and sobbing. She sees him sitting in a meeting playing with a click pen. She sees him locked in his lab with sagging eyelids and three empty pots of coffee. But she doesn’t see an explanation for how she can put up with him. In the name of professionalism, she manages an answer: “Oh, Mr. Stark’s a great man, just a little rough around the edges sometimes.”

The conversation shifts away, to tropical vacations and childhood cartoons, the common attempts businessmen make in conversations to humanize their conceited agendas. Pepper remains cool and detached, laughing in the appropriate moments and playing the young entrepreneur’s amateur game. Soon follows the indiscreet passing of a business card with a personal number scribbled on the back (Old school and overused, Pepper observes, and the card finds a new home in a wastebasket before long. Shy smiles and butterflies don’t exist in her professional world).  Then the long awaited goodbyes, the insincere “I look forward to meeting you agains,” and then the relief of solitude on her drive to meet Tony for dinner (strictly business, she mentally asserts, though she’s not sure why it matters so much).

The genius is sitting alone at a table for two, early for once in his life. Pepper approaches with curiosity, gauging his blank expression. The absence of his usual playful eyes and smirk is unusual, but Pepper refuses to be concerned until she’s heard any explanation he might have.

“Potts,” he greets her by her last name, a habit of his reserved for his hours of moodiness or depression. He closes up like a cocoon whenever he isn’t feeling his normal spirits, and resorts to last names and blank expressions to keep everyone out – even Pepper.

“Mr. Stark,” she says professionally – she’ll let Tony have his cold detachment if he wants it. “How have you been?” She rarely bothers with small talk around her boss, but in times like this when his mood is unreadable, she can’t jump straight into anything. If she wants a response from him about the important matters, she has to ease into them.

“Fine,” he says, plain and dry. She doesn’t press. They order their food, Pepper ignoring the price (and calorie count) of the New York strip she orders. After a week filled with salads twice a day, continual board meetings and press conferences, one call from Tony at two am, and one government search warrant out of nowhere, Pepper figures she deserves a comfort meal.

“FBI paid us a visit,” she informs Tony, “Said they had reason to believe we were housing contraband. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Weapons companies get that often,” Tony answers, “There wasn’t any contraband and they know it. They just want to see if we have any advanced tech that they haven’t snuck into their pockets yet. Did they go into the lab?”

“No,” Pepper says, “I told them I didn’t have clearance, only you, and that you were out attending a meeting in Paris. I then informed them that if they attempted to enter by force, your AI was programmed to eliminate any intruders. They left immediately.”

“That’s my Pepper,” Tony says, fondness and pride leaking into his expression. Pepper fights a smile.

“I see what you mean,” she says, “Once they couldn’t see the lab, they were gone.”

“Contraband, my ass,” Tony agrees, the blankness leaving his face. He now looks thoughtful.

Pepper drifts back to the question the entrepreneur asked her. How does Pepper Potts, the most organized, normalcy-seeking, order-driven woman alive deal with Tony Stark, the most disorganized, insane, spur-of-the-moment, I-do-what-I-want man alive? She honestly doesn’t know. 

***

He misses his own awards ceremony. He forgets her birthday. He shows up late to his own personally scheduled flight to Afghanistan. He’s basically just being himself. But then he goes missing. He disappears for three months. Now he’s not being himself. She knows something’s terribly wrong, and she’s scared.

She cries over her boss. Pepper Potts cries over her boss. Pepper Potts crying is a paradox in and of itself, and now she’s made a habit of it. Every time she passes Tony Stark’s office on the way to her own, the same tears fill her eyes. Of course, she composes herself. He was her boss, and nothing more. He overpaid her, underappreciated her, and probably deserved whatever came to him, she tells herself.

He was horrible, she tells herself every time a board meeting finishes without the sound of an obnoxious billionaire’s click pen and occasional snores. She reminds herself of her newfound belief – things happen when you deserve them. Nobody’s living a life that’s out to get them, what you do with your life determines what it throws at you. Tony was a playboy, a weapons dealer, and a heartless ruler of whomever he could force into submission. He wasted the greatest moments of his life, she tells herself, and now life has wasted him. She doesn’t believe it, though.  

She still accidentally orders his coffee at Starbucks on her way to work. He had two favorites, and he’d always rotate between them. It was either “coffee so black that it rivals the blackness of my dad’s poor, dead heart” or “heavenly chocolate goodness with the caffeine chips and whipped angels and melted bliss on top”. (Translation: a black coffee or a java chip frappuccino.)

She still copies him on important emails to the Stark Industries board of directors. She still puts her junk files on Tony’s desk – he came in once a week and glanced over whatever looked semi important, and then shredded everything. Pepper hates shredding, so she would sneak her own trash files into his stack. Old habits die hard, just like the bosses that you don’t realize you care about until they’re kidnapped with a six percent chance of ever returning. Rhodey informs her that it is actually less than that, but for her sake he rounds up.

***

Tony comes home, arm in a sling. He refuses the wheelchair provided for him, preferring to stager around grabbing onto someone when he really needs support. It’s the same Tony Stark with a new expression – a wry smile and clouded eyes.

“Shed a few tears for your long lost boss?” He asks Pepper. She sniffs.

“Tears of joy,” she deflects, “I hate job hunting.” He nods, and she wonders if this was the grand moment she’d been wanting for three months. She’d imagined his homecoming, filled with tears and something less unfeeling than a crowd of reporters. The moment has arrived. It’s all press and camera flashes, and Tony demanding burgers and a press conference.

***

Life slips back into routine – except for the entire weapons sector of Stark Industries being cleared out and endless meetings for the sole purpose of dissuading the board from making decisions everyone will regret. Pepper knows people underestimate Tony Stark. If the board locks Tony out of his own company, the directors could be signing a death wish.

Obadiah Stane is a source of comfort and also wariness for Pepper. He’s the one she turns to when she needs to be assured that she is right and Tony is wrong. But sometimes he argues that Tony is a little too wrong, for a little too long. She’s not against her boss, just his insensible pitches and ideals. Stane seems vehement in his frustration with Tony’s age, incapability, and habits. He calls him an overrated genius driving himself into the ground with his naivety and his alcoholism. Pepper walks away from those conversations feeling traitorous.

***

Stark Industries is selling weapons to terrorists under the table and without Tony’s consent. Tony is being kept alive by a magnet. Tony creates a suit of armor. Obadiah is a betraying son of a bitch. Tony tells Pepper that she’s all he has, and her heart stops beating for the first time since her last high school crush. Obadiah creates a bigger suit of armor (with help, Pepper reassures a disgruntled Tony, he isn’t as smart as you). Tony almost dies. Tony destroys Iron Monger and Obadiah along with it. Pepper’s heart stops again when she fixes his tie. Tony tells the world he’s not the hero type – but then he tells the world that he’s something better: Iron Man (which he then tells Pepper was a difficult thing to say, as the suit is technically gold and titanium alloy, but the fans don’t dig the technical stuff).

***

Mr. Stark becomes Tony. Pepper becomes Pep (a nickname for a nickname, because Tony can’t just conquer one battlefield). They’re in uncharted territory, where she ends up on the couch only a foot away from Tony watching Batman Forever after a particularly long day, she orders herself takeout along with his, and his coffee is no longer off limits.

They don’t admit it but the lines are getting blurry. She shouldn’t be letting this happen, but the thing is, she never noticed when it started.

***

The world doesn’t stop spinning so that Pepper can adjust to the new Tony – the one who’s not a playboy or an asshole (she’s lost that reason to not fall for him, and now all she’s left with is professionalism and reputation to hold him at arm’s length). Things happen, like SHIELD and Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer and Tony almost dying (again), only this time the circumstances don’t endear him to her.

This time he doesn’t return from captivity with a new sense of humanity. He doesn’t make an obvious effort to be a better man. He hides the fact that he’s dying with public intoxication and random decisions that don’t make sense. And she’s furious.

Until he saves her life. And they’re on a rooftop. And they’re slowly closing the distance between them until there isn’t any at all, and she finally knows what his lips feel like on hers. And there’s a moment of clarity when the city around them is still burning, a moment when she realizes that she shouldn’t feel this fine after almost dying, a moment when she understands how she puts up with Tony Stark.

Because she doesn’t put up with Tony Stark. He’s the reason she can put up with the rest of the world.

***

Things are never easy and things are never simple. They aren’t supposed to be. Her mother always told her that when the first kiss comes before the first date, things are bound to be complicated. That, plus the fact that it’s Tony Stark she’s dealing with, and that he somehow managed to shoulder the weight of the world, and that boundaries are as hard to take down as they are to establish.

But she’s found that there’s a method to his madness and a comfort in all the blurred lines. And she loves him through it all.

 

End.


End file.
